The Circle of Eight is pleased to present the latest versions of the modpack for Troika Games' Temple of Elemental Evil - Circle of Eight Modpacks 7.0.0 and 7.0.0 NC.
Both modpacks are identical, save for the major new content expansions included in the NC version. These now include:

War of the Golden Skull - a high level expansion where the village of Hommlet comes under seige from the powerful Hextorite army, intent on locating and taking possession of the nebulous Golden Skull.

I really enjoyed my last Co8 playthrough - but that was only about 6 months ago, so too soon to try again! I thought they were working on a new Keep of the Borderlands module based on the engine? Is that still alive? As someon who likes DnD combat mechanics, I love this engine!

Thanks very much for the head's up on this piece of news. The last update I had from my second playthrough was 5.0, so I'll update my files since the new content sounds too tempting to at least check out! Think I might try it with a good party some time in the new year, since I already beat the game with both neutral and evil parties.

I loved the mechanics of this game. Best use of design in laying out the complexities of D&D. The radial wheels are fantastic, helping to remind you which characters have which abilities… I'm always forgetting about special abilities in these games. Easy to read typeface (I'm sick of the Olde English and yellowed parchment crap). Great music too.

But what's the deal with the temple itself? Are you just supposed to go kill everything inside it? I ultimately got bored with trekking back and forth just to rest and avoid random encounters. The back and forth got to be as much work as fighting, exploring, etc.

That was my general impression as well. It had some of the best mechanics ever for recreating 3rd edition rules. But the game was released in an extremely unfinished state with a lot of the content missing. So despite the great mechanics it was never actually a great game in it's original form. That's even ignoring the numerous game breaking bugs and the fact that the horrible AI killed any challenge in many of the encounters.

So anyway I never played the Co8 patch, but given how much of a mess the original game was, I'd certainly encourage anyone to use it. It's not like the original had some great artistic vision that the patch will disrupt.

Originally Posted by Ovenall
I loved the mechanics of this game. Best use of design in laying out the complexities of D&D. The radial wheels are fantastic, helping to remind you which characters have which abilities… I'm always forgetting about special abilities in these games. Easy to read typeface (I'm sick of the Olde English and yellowed parchment crap). Great music too.

But what's the deal with the temple itself? Are you just supposed to go kill everything inside it? I ultimately got bored with trekking back and forth just to rest and avoid random encounters. The back and forth got to be as much work as fighting, exploring, etc.

Originally Posted by MrSanta78
Hello, what would you watchers recomend to ToEE virgin? Make first walkthrough in "vanilla" and save Co8 for another run or play with Co8 on the very first run?

I would tentatively suggest you play through with the NC the first time, though I haven't played v7 yet. The game's about the awesome combat engine, not the story, and the NC adds lots of battles--most of my favourite/most memorable moments from the game are NC battles, to be honest. For that reason, I'd suggest using the NC and getting as much out of the game as you can the first go-round.

Oh, in case you haven't heard, practice rigid save discipline. Don't use quicksave, use full saves. Cycle five or six save slots, at least, extending back a couple of hours. Saves can get get corrupted easily in this game and Co8 has an unfixable bug that will make it almost impossible to move around Hommlet. If you experience save corruption on a file, restart the game and don't try to load the corrupted save file, just the one before. If you try to load the corrupted first, sometimes it will tell you that the others are corrupt, too, which is a lie.

Sorry for the info dump. The game is awesome, though, and I want you to get the most out of it the first time.

I had a pretty funny bug in this game. My cleric was using some unique +2 damage club (this is around level 6) and was consistently hitting everything for over 400 points of damage with it. One-hit everything.

Originally Posted by Ovenall
So what's the deal with this game? Did I just miss the point?

Sort of, though it probably isn't your fault. You played a good character, right? As an evil character, you won't automatically aggro everyone and there are some decent factional and quest chains within the temple. As a good character (in my experience), you mow your way to the bottom.

I have always thought ToEE was a poor choice of module / material, despite the concept sounding great on paper.

Thanks for replays, although it doesn't help much
I think I will make my first with Co8 bug-fix only as sugested by Thoth. I am not that big fan of battles and as Skittles stated Co8 NC add a lots of battles.
We will se how it will work in a distant future.
Once again thanks.

Originally Posted by MrSanta78
Thanks for replays, although it doesn't help much
I think I will make my first with Co8 bug-fix only as sugested by Thoth. I am not that big fan of battles and as Skittles stated Co8 NC add a lots of battles.
We will se how it will work in a distant future.
Once again thanks.

Fair 'nuff, but be warned that the combat is really TOEE's best component. The dungeons aren't particularly inspired nor are the characters and story (if you couldn't tell from Ovenall's post).

Well, I sought out the Temple, but seriously only because the game is named Temple of Elemental Evil. There's really no reason given in the game to go there, or what to do there.

Yes, I played good. So I guess you're supposed to go through and clear the place out. Again, this means lots and lots of backtracking through different maps just to be able to rest safely and regain spells. Really the weakest point of the game for me. I know it's a tabletop simulator, but a human DM could hear "we head back to town" and roll the dice a few times for random encounters… but here you have to slog through map after map just to rest. The chances of wandering monsters is waaaay too high, IMO and choked the fun out of the game for me.

Originally Posted by Skittles
Fair 'nuff, but be warned that the combat is really TOEE's best component. The dungeons aren't particularly inspired nor are the characters and story (if you couldn't tell from Ovenall's post).

Yeah, I got it. I think I will postpone my ToEE run to a really distant future. I got tons of games to play and I prefer story and exploration. But at least GOG got some money from me and it's a good thing too

I loaded this up on a fresh install - seems nice and stable compared to my last efforts. Windows 7 seems to like it where Vista was a disaster. Only issue I had was the locked down state of the directory to get widescreen working.